The Smell of Bleach in the Afternoon
by MerciaLachesis
Summary: Today is Luna's first mission. She's excited, mostly, but also nervous. Especially since she has to get in and out of SHIELD(an evil and corrupt organization.)Mr Pierce seems to think she'll be alright though… but then his head is clouded with Wrackspurts. But It's Luna's new handler that she's mostly worried about- the Asset. PART THREE of the Under the Moon Series. ONE-SHOT.


A/N- **Hey guys, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Hope you like this. Please review! :) Just to remind you guys, this is set after CA: The First Avenger end credit scene but before the Avenger's Assemble (2012).**

"Luna," calls Madame Yelena, "I want you to meet someone important."

Normally, she wouldn't hesitate to follow anything Madame Yelena says but, lately, Luna's learnt from experience to be wary of new people.

"Let's go now- it's best not to keep him waiting."

So, Luna reluctantly follows after her Madame. And she should be able to handle this, she's seven now- she's a big girl. There's the elevator that none of the girls are allowed into, silver and clean like everything else here. Luna straightens her back, she's never been here before, only the older girls are ever sent up here, maybe this will be interesting…

Luna counts the seconds till the destination- three, she's three floors up- and then, "Click." The doors open. Madame Yelena looks at Luna before they step out into the second series of corridors- as if assessing her and eyeing her up. She smiles. Her heels tap carefully against the linoleum floor and Luna obediently pads behind her. Two left turns and four rights later, they meet a pair of thick lead sliding doors.

"Are you ready to become a valued member of this organisation?" It seems like an innocent question, but Luna knows better by now.

"Yes, of course." Luna says without hesitating.

The doors open and she's greeted with the sight of a heavily equipped training centre with the only exit as the one she is currently standing at. The biggest threat however, is the man standing a few metres away with a metal arm.

Luna does her best to stand tall, and sizes him up a bit. He doesn't stand confidently and the Nargles that dance around him don't seem to want anything except what's in his head. In fact, when she analyses them carefully, they seem to be acting a lot like Wrackspurts… Hmmm. What could they possibly want to steal from his head?

"Luna," Madame Yelena says sharply, "this man is going to be your new handler to prepare you for your first mission. You will address him as sir, you understand?"

"Yes."

….

It isn't long before Luna learns why the Nargles the Asset keeps about him are so strange. "What's your name?" she asks after one particularly exhausting exercise.

His cold eyes seem to waver for a second before being replaced with a blank stare, then he just grunts and says," not good enough, again." Then he loads a fresh magazine into the gun and fires the rounds in a quick succession. Luna doesn't have time to think before tumbling in the air, dodging bullet after bullet, getting faster and faster. After a few minutes she collects her thoughts; 'he doesn't know who he is!'

The Asset nods, "Let's move on."

The strange Nargles seem to react a bit more violently towards her now.

….

After the fourth day of training, Madame Yelena comes back to take her to another room. A little bubble of curiosity sparks and she's brave enough to ask where they're going.

Madame Yelena just smiles, "Where going to brief you on your first mission."

Unlike the training room which is very light, this room is dark but Luna isn't scared of the dark. There's a man there she doesn't recognise. "Hullo," she says brightly, "Who are you?"

Like most people she has encountered up to this point, his head is swarming with angry Wrackspurts.

"This is Mr Pierce," Says Madame Yelena. Luna can tell by the tone of her voice that she doesn't like Mr Pierce. "You must call him sir."

"Hello." Luna says again. "Hello sir."

Mr Pierce crouches down till he's her height and smiles. "Hi Luna, I hear you're going to do something very important for me. Thank you." He straightens himself back up and spreads his arms out- which leaves him vulnerable for an attack. "And, aren't we all friends here, helping one another? Call me Mr Pierce, Luna. Don't mind what that old bat Yelena says."

Luna wants to point out that, compared to Madame Yelena, he's the old bat, but she doesn't. Luna doesn't think she likes Mr Pierce either. Nevertheless, Luna nods.

Behind her, Madame Yelena clears her throat and glances warily at Mr Pierce. "The briefing."

….

The next day is Luna's last training session with the Asset before the mission. They do the usual tests; the strength, the agility, the ability to be silent and still and invisible. Mr Pierce and Madame Yelena stand at the side talking- about her probably- and furiously scribbling down notes. When there's only ten minutes left until she prepares to leave for the mission, Mr Pierce suggests they spar. Luna is careful to note the way Madame Yelena's arm twitches, and the way she hesitates before smiling.

"Soldier," He says. It's the first time Luna's heard the Asset be called Soldier, "don't kill her, she's important, but do your best. I want to see how long she'll last."

Luna, quickly grabbing two of the knives she has strapped to her hip, relaxes into a defensive position and she hears the Asset go into the offence and his arm whirring into place. Then Mr Pierce calls them to start. There's no time before she gets out of the firing line, he comes at her fast, she dodges and dodges, matching his speed, but she needs to make an attack. She quickly goes in for his left leg which is open, but it's too late before she realizes the ploy. He jumps out of the way, tripping her- and she's on the ground giving him even more of a leverage. She quickly chucks her knife at him but it bounces harmlessly off his metal arm. Before she knows it, he has her by the collar of her shirt- but she takes the advantage to make a kick at his ribs and hoist herself onto his shoulders in a swift move. She leans forward and he staggers a little, just enough for her to try a jab at his neck with the other knife, but instead he reaches his metal arm and brings her crashing into the ground. A metal hand comes around her throat and he pulls his other arm back for a punch, and then-

"Stop, stop. That's enough, stand down soldier." Interrupts Mr Pierce, just as Luna is about to go for a weak kick to the groin. " I'm impressed Luna. Really. You held up for three minutes, which is remarkable!" He turns to Madame Yelena, "I can see why you said she's good. And she's only seven, you say?! Maybe the next Widow?"

"Window?" asks Luna curiously. Why would Mr Pierce think she would be a good window? Certainly there was a lack of them at the place (Blibbering Humdingers often like to inhabit places without natural light, after all) but surely the Academy could afford new windows without her having to be one!

"Widow," Madame Yelena corrects, "But it's nothing to worry about for now. Go prepare for your first mission."

Luna is dismissed and she hurries to the supply room and grabs everything she needs and more into a black daysack. Her hands quiver a little with excitement and nervousness- she has to do well.

….

The mission is simple; retrieve the flash drive and insert the sleeper virus… only it's SHIELD she's sneaking into. SHIELD, by the way, is an evil and corrupt organization made to take down HYDRA(which is good and will change the world), but SHIELD has some top of the line security systems in place and trained operatives at least four times her age and three times her size.

What surprises Luna is that there are a lot less Wrackspurts here than there are back at the Academy.

Luna's on observation from a narrow, unsecured air vent so she notices the average number of Wrackspurts that follow the SHIELD people is much less as well. Although, the number of Nargles are just as many.

She doesn't have time to think about this however- she's on a mission remember?- because she sees an opening; the hall is clear and the cameras are facing the other direction. She decides to make a sprint for it.

Luna's about two paces from the door when she hears voices and footsteps. There really isn't any time to unlock the code panel which separates her from the room she has to get into. Luna tries not to panic but if she's detected she's already failed the mission! She looks around. Surely there has to be somewhere she can hide, right? She suddenly spots a pair of lockers which a very careless SHIELD agent must have left open. Perfect.

Although it's strange… Luna's always very observant and if she really thinks about it, were those lockers really there before? Well, whatever, Luna dives in and shuts the door, letting her 'Silent Training' kick in.

….

Annoyingly, the people that almost compromised Luna's mission decide to stand right outside her current hiding place, they talk quietly for a while before she hears a "Thank you, Agent Morse." and a, "You're welcome." and footsteps padding away in different directions.

Luna rummages around her daysack for a while before fishing out a codebreaking device. Then she prays that her timing is right and the security camera is facing in the other direction, before she hops out of the locker gingerly and silently.

She attaches the codebreaker and counts the seconds until the numbers, " 2." flash across the screen and a small click is heard. Then she pushes the door open, and crouches down to the floor immediately.

Chances are- if she's lucky- they'll only have security cameras and an automated alarm, and if she's not lucky… well she'll deal with it when it comes.

She doesn't shut the door behind her, which is her first mistake.

….

Luna squints to adjust her eyes to the dark room, with the only light coming from the computers lining the desks. Scanning the room, Luna sees the set of filing cabinets that Mr Pierce mentioned during the briefing. Luna knows that she's behind schedule, thanks to the agents from before, and only has approximately two and a half minutes before a guard comes to do his rounds.

Quickly, Luna crawls over to the cabinets and skims through until she sees the seventh drawer. It's locked but that isn't a problem. It costs her four seconds but she finally manages to fumble around and find the correct lock pick. The drawer opens and sure enough there's a flash drive with the numbers, "3 9 5." Luna grabs it along with a folder saying, "Level 2 Communications." which appears to be a list of logins and passwords for each agent- which is quite careless but good for her.

She logs onto the nearest computer using the first name in the folder and waits for it to upload, wasting another twenty seconds and she has only one and a half minutes left. Then she plugs in the drive with the sleeper virus (which costs another ten seconds to upload onto the SHIELD mainframe). Now, she's done with thirty seconds to hide or escape. At the moment, Luna realises escape isn't an option. So it's a tight squeeze, but Luna manages to fit into one of the filing cabinets.

And then it hits her; her second mistake. Oh how could she have been so stupid?! She's left the folder of logins on the table and forgotten to log out!

Luna pushes her way out of the drawer and by calculations, this should be fine- she has twenty seconds left after all. But it's not. She's left the door open and a concerned agent has come to check out why. Luna lets her instincts take over and drops a kick to the guy's ankle, slamming the door shut at the same time. She can already sense him coming up behind her and elbows him once in the stomach and then in the face. He knocks out cold.

And now she's in a fine predicament because the actual guard should be coming any moment now and Luna has to hide the guy she's just taken out. Instead she takes the folder that caused this mess, logs out of the computer and stuffs the guy into the cabinet below the one she hid in- barely- and then hides herself.

Luna decides to ignore the crunch of the body she's hidden in a place that should really be far too small for him, but he'll live after all.

The guard comes and leaves and Luna jumps out and hauls the mangled body of the SHIELD agent out of the drawer and onto her shoulders. It's an odd sight, a child lugging a fully grown man around, but no one sees them so it's okay.

He wakes up just in time to for her to shove him through the (again too small) vents and Luna is so glad she came over-prepared because she immediately stabs him with a needle and injects a sedative.

So she wasn't completely undetected but the mission is over.

….

Luna gets bored very easily, and Madame Yelena surely doesn't expect her to wait an hour for pick up behind a bin! The man she's knocked unconscious, like many others at SHIELD, hasn't got many Wrackspurts either so she rummages around his many pockets for some sort of charm that's keeping them at back. Nothing she's found so far seems to be what's keeping them at bay except a circle shaped, metal badge with the eagle Luna recognises is for SHIELD. Which is strange because SHIELD is bad, right? SHIELD is evil and corrupt and is just the place the should be infested with Wrackspurts, but it's not. The Wrackspurts actually shy away from them. Luna tries to reason with herself that maybe the badge is made out of a special metal, she's so confused!

And then there's a change in the wind. Luna looks up- her ride back to the Academy. Luna pockets the badge quickly.

Grabbing the SHIELD man, Luna climbs into the car.

….

"How did your first mission go, Luna?" Says Madame Yelena, though she still hasn't stopped staring at the man groaning softly at Luna's feet.

"It was successful." Luna replies obediently.

"Mmm hmm." She hums, unconvinced. "Did you get the flash drive?"

"Yes."

"And did you install the virus?"

"Yes."

"And so, what's this? I asked you to get in and out without being detected, Luna. No mistakes should have been made." There's a clear threat to her tone, but Luna is Madame Yelena's favourite so Luna knows this is just for show, considering Mr Pierce's presence behind her.

"I made a mistake but I corrected it. He's still alive though, don't worry." replies Luna.

"Well I'm not worried about his wellbeing, Luna. I'm worried about more important matters, like the covertness of your mission!" She scolds.

"Well I think it's fine." Says Mr Pierce from behind. He gives a wry smile, "He's one of ours anyway."

Luna's befuddled a bit; why would a Hydra agent be at somewhere as terrible as SHIELD? Her question is answered quickly.

"You got lucky this time Luna, This man was a Hydra spy in SHIELD doing good work. Your mission was successful, just. No mistakes next time though." Warns Madame Yelena.

"I know."

"Good."

….

At the very end of the day, Luna looks at the SHIELD badge in her hand and giggles. Even if SHEILD is evil, they can keep the Wrackspurts away, and maybe those strange Nargles the Asset has. She decides to give it to him tomorrow.

Her carelessness hasn't gone unpunished, she has hot red markings all over her back, but she's still okay and she's helped HYDRA, and made the world a better place!

She slips the metal badge back into her pocket and lets herself be cuffed to the bedpost. She can't wait for tomorrow!

A/N- Hope you enjoyed this! Please Review!

-Mercia x


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